But treatment isn't easy. Most kids found guilty of a crime go on probation, stay with their family, and never go to a youth center, so “Kids have to work pretty hard to get here,” observes Colin O’Neill, Long Creek’s deputy superintendent for treatment. They're tough cases. The typical resident is male — only 20 or so girls are at Long Creek — and 16 to 18 years old. They usually have multiple violations behind them, come from poverty, and often have family members who have run afoul of the law. Almost universally they have a substance-abuse history.
Long Creek treatment involves a lot of psychotherapy — primarily, group therapy. Long Creek doesn’t rehabilitate, it “habilitates,” the staff says in chorus. They have to teach correct behavior for the first time. A “risk reduction” class that students take four times a week uses role-playing to illustrate how to solve personal problems and teaches breathing techniques for stress reduction. The kids "kind of teach each other,” says Becky Yarborough, a risk-reduction teacher who has a master’s in psychology.

Philip Smith, 18, of South Portland, an engaging young man with a wispy goatee and dark-rimmed glasses who says he’s in for stealing a car, says Long Creek “brings out who you really are.” He describes a challenging family background, but now he is learning how not “to act like other people. . . . Some people try to bring you down with them.”

Bouffard, O’Neill, and Eric Gilliam, the deputy superintendent for operations, all come from a mental-health-treatment background, with no previous experience in corrections. Bouffard was superintendent of both the Augusta Mental Health Institute (AMHI, now Riverview Psychiatric Center) and the Pineland Center for developmentally disabled people. Gilliam worked at Pineland and AMHI as chief operating officer, and O’Neill was a social worker at group homes for disturbed kids.

In a typical prison, security staff tend to rule, as they did at the old Maine Youth Center. But, Bouffard says, "Good treatment is good security.”

“If a therapist gave a kid a soda,” he adds, recalling the bad old days, "A security staffer would take the soda away and say ‘This session is over.’”

To create the new atmosphere, a lot of employee training was necessary. And some new staff were necessary, Bouffard says. “It was no fun."

The new management team’s arrival at Long Creek roughly coincided with the opening in 2002 of a new building next to the old, Victorian-looking Maine Youth Center administration building, which now houses private offices. Except for a wire fence, the new center looks like a new high school. In fact, it includes one, the fully accredited A.R. Gould School. Graduates receive regular diplomas.

Ann Marie Barter, the assistant principal, says that while student IQs have a normal range, many students have dyslexia and a lot of “missed school.” To tackle such problems, in addition to small class sizes, there are volunteer tutors or mentors. Emmy Brown of Brunswick, the longtime volunteer coordinator and herself a volunteer, says the 100 citizens who give an hour a week “feel this is a private school,” albeit one with locked doors.

Solitary confinement: bad for chimps, okay for humans? Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins is a key cosponsor of legislation that, among other provisions, would outlaw psychologically damaging solitary confinement for more than 500 chimpanzees caged for research in federally supported laboratories.

Build on each other Why is that when one Maine news outlet breaks a big story, the others spend more energy trying to copy it, rather than extend it? Take the most recent example, the labor mural dispute.

Top prison officials fired In a continuing shakeup at the troubled Maine State Prison, new Corrections commissioner Joseph Ponte has fired six top officials including its controversial security chief, Deputy Warden James O'Farrell.

Interview: Ray Harrington returns to Maine This weekend, the transplanted Maine stand-up comedian Ray Harrington appears for a weekend of shows at the Comedy Connection, performing a set that will be recorded for a forthcoming record on, as he puts it, a "legitimate label."

Tapley racks up another award Portland Phoenix contributing writer Lance Tapley, who has covered conditions in the Maine State Prison and throughout the state's corrections system since 2005, will be honored by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine for "outstanding advocacy for prison reform."

Review: The Whole World Waiting They thought America was a glittering land of wealth and fame . . . they were wrong. Fifteen immigrant and refugee teenagers tell their stories of coming to New England and share their perspectives in The Whole World Waiting , a compilation of documentary vignettes lushly shot by David Meiklejohn at locations in and around Portland, Maine.

SUBVERSIVE SUMMER | June 18, 2014 Prisons, pot festivals, and Orgonon: Here are some different views of summertime Maine — seen through my personal political lens.

LEFT-RIGHT CONVERGENCE - REALLY? | June 06, 2014 “Unstoppable: A Gathering on Left-Right Convergence,” sponsored by consumer advocate Ralph Nader, featured 26 prominent liberal and conservative leaders discussing issues on which they shared positions. One was the minimum wage.

STATE OF POLARIZATION | April 30, 2014 As the campaign season begins, leading the charge on one side is a rural- and northern-Maine-based Trickle-Down Tea Party governor who sees government’s chief role as helping the rich (which he says indirectly helps working people), while he vetoes every bill in sight directly helping the poor and the struggling middle class, including Medicaid expansion, the issue that most occupied the Legislature this year and last.

MICHAEL JAMES SENT BACK TO PRISON | April 16, 2014 The hearing’s topic was whether James’s “antisocial personality disorder” was enough of a mental disease to keep him from being sent to prison.